The present invention pertains generally to lasers and more particularly to generation of tunable infrared radiation.
There has been a long standing need for an efficient high-power source of tunable infrared radiation for the purpose of laser isotope separation and various photochemical applications. A variety of nonlinear optical frequency conversion techniques using crystals have been developed which provide tunable infrared radiation. These devices, however, have not been scalable in size or pulse repetition rate as required by many potential applications. Although the process of four-wave mixing in molecular gases has been successfully used for generation of ultra-violet wavelengths by utilizing the large electronic contribution to the third order susceptibility available in the ultra-violet spectral region, this process has not been successfully utilized in the infrared region to produce a source of tunable high power infrared radiation.